Crossed legs can have a devastating effect on a
negotiation. In How to Read a Person Like a Book, authors
Gerard I. Nierenberg and Henry H. Calero reported that the number
of times settlements were reached increased greatly when both
negotiators had uncrossed their legs. In fact, they found that
out of two thousand videotaped transactions, not one
resulted in a settlement when even one of the negotiators had his
or her legs crossed.